Previous Professors

Al Valdez, Ph.D.
Al is currently a professor at the University of California, Irvine after retiring from the Orange County District Attorney’s office in April 2006; where he was the Gang Unit supervisor. He has over 28 years of law enforcement experience with special emphasis on narcotic and gang investigations, undercover field operations, and multi-agency task forces and prosecutions.  He has written over 80 articles and published eight books on gang histories, customs and practices, and related issues.  Al was selected as the 2001 District Attorney Investigator of the Year for the state of California. In 2005 he received the Academic Achievement Award for educational and training achievements by the Asian Gang Investigators Association of California. He was selected “Professor of the Year” at UCI in 2009 and is a nationally recognized expert in gang behaviors, customs and practices.

William R. Schonfeld

William R. Schonfeld is Professor Political Science. His primary research focuses on democratic theory, Western Europe and France. From 1982 to 2002, he served as Dean of the School of Social Sciences. He has received the outstanding teaching awards from the UCI Academic Senate and from Alumni Association (Lauds and Laurels].

Rafael L. Bras
Rafael L. Bras is Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering of the University of California, Irvine. He is a professor in the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Earth Systems Science at UCI. For 32 years prior to joining UCI he was a professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at MIT. He is past Chair of the MIT Faculty and former head of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at MIT. He has served as advisor to many government and private institutions. Some of the most significant and recent ones include: Advisory Board, Engineering Directorate, NSF; Board of Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, National Research Council; Chairman, Earth Systems Sciences and Applications Committee of NASA and the NASA Advisory Committee; National Academy of Sciences Committee on New Orleans Regional Hurricane Protection Projects; Advisory to departments at Cornell university, Princeton university, Johns Hopkins, Technion, RPI, University of Puerto Rico; University of California-Irvine; Fundacion Chile; Instituto Veneto; Stockholm Water Foundation and Prize; Clarke prize. He is a director of the American Geophysical Union and a member of the UCI Foundation.
As Dean, Dr. Bras is responsible for the education of about 2450 undergraduates and 750 graduate students in the Henry Samueli School of Engineering. These students reside in one of 5 academic departments: Civil and Environmental, Mechanical and Aerospace, Chemical and Material Sciences, Electrical and Computer Sciences and Biomedical Engineering. He heads a team of 110 faculty members and many more administrative and educational/research staff.
Dr. Bras has been very active in several professional organizations. He is past president of the Hydrology section of AGU. Dr. Bras has received many honors and awards. These include: honorary degree for the University of Perugia, Italy, Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award Hall of Fame member, NASA Public Service Medal, the Macelwane Medal of AGU, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize, Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award, Honorary Diplomate of Water Resources Engineering of the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers, Horton Medal of AGU, AGU Hydrology Days Award, member of the US National Academy of Engineering and corresponding member of the Mexican National Academy of Engineering. He is an elected Fellow of AGU, ASCE, AMS and AAAS.
Dr. Bras maintains an active international consulting practice. Presently he chairs a panel of experts that supervises the design and construction of a multibillion-dollar project to protect the City of Venice from floods.
Dr. Bras has published two textbooks, over 180 refereed journal publications, and several hundred other publications and presentations.

Professor Richard Minot
Richard Minot received his BS in Accounting at the University of Rhode Island in 1975. Mr. Minot has been affiliated with the University of California, Irvine's Paul Merage School of Business as a lecturer on various accounting subjects since 1997. Mr. Minot is a graduate of the inaugural class of the Bridge Program for Professionally Qualified faculty sponsored by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and has spoken to subsequent classes. He has spoken before and participated in panel discussions regarding the subject of Professionally Qualified faculty in collegiate schools of business.
Professionally, he is a member of the American Accounting Association as well as both the California Society of CPAs and the National Society of Public Accountants. Mr. Minot has been a Certified Public Accountant since 1978 and is currently the owner of Minot Accountancy Corporation. He has been a professional speaker with Gear Up Tax Seminars, a national seminar firm (1991-1995) and Sharpen Up Tax Seminars, (1996-1999) and was a founding partner in ACE Seminars a continuing professional education company.
Mr. Minot is a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Rhode Island College of Business Administration and also speaks annually to various professional accounting associations on accounting, tax and ethics topics for continuing professional education. He was an instructor at Coastline Community College where he taught basic accounting/bookkeeping as well as developing and teaching tax update courses for local tax practitioners from 1979-1984 and holds a lifetime credential for community college teaching. He was a partner in a local accounting firm and headed the audit department at that firm from 1978-1980. He began his professional career at Price Waterhouse &Co. and worked there from 1975-1978.

Professor Oladele A. Ogunseitan, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Oladele “Dele” Ogunseitan is Professor and Chair of Population Health and Disease Prevention in the Program in Public Health. He is also a Professor of Social Ecology. He earned is Bachelors and Masters in Microbiology at the University of Ife, Nigeria where he also completed a year with the National Youth Service Corps program.  Dele earned his doctorate in microbiology from the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Tennessee, and his Master of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also earned a Certificate in International Health.  He is alumnus faculty fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He directs the Research and Education in Green Materials lead campus component of the University of California Systemwide Toxic Substances Research & Teaching Program. He is Principal Investigator of a National Science Foundation funded project on Biocomplexity in the Environment: Materials Use, Science, Engineering and Society (MUSES). He is the author of an acclaimed book on Microbial Diversity and has published widely on microbial ecotoxicology, environmental health and industrial ecology.

Dr. Catherine Loudon

Dr. Catherine Loudon joined the faculty at UCI in 2006 after 10 years on the faculty at the University of Kansas. Dr. Loudon got her undergraduate degree in biophysics at Brown University, and her Ph.D. degree in zoology (with a minor in mechanical engineering) at Duke University. Dr. Loudon's particular interests are in physiology (how organisms work), sensory ecology, and biomechanics, usually working with insects. Here at UCI she has taught Human Physiology, Comparative Animal Physiology, Biostatistics, Freshmen seminars, Organisms to Ecosystems (introductory biology), and Scientific Videography.  She has had a number of undergraduate students do independent research projects with her, tackling important questions about insects while using interesting equipment such as high-speed cameras.